One of the delights of specialist post-ex work is that you never know quite what the next delivery from the postman or courier will bring. Today’s delivery was of 15 crates of iron-working residue (almost quarter of a tonne!) from a medieval site in Ireland.

A quick look (its a bit like Christmas…!) shows a beautifully-preserved assemblage of slag and large fragments of tuyères (the ceramic ‘nozzle’ carrying the blast from the bellows into the blacksmith’s hearth).